PostgreSQL on a Pure Storage All Flash Array – Preparations

Yesterday we got a Pure Storage All Flash Array for testing. As the name implies this is all about Flash storage. What makes Pure Storage different from other vendors is that you don’t buy just a storage box and then pay the usual maintenance costs but you pay for a storage subscription which should keep your storage up to date all the time. The promise is that all the components of the array get replaced by the then current versions over time without forcing you to re-buy. Check the link above for more details on the available subscriptions. This is the first post and describes the setup we did for connecting a PostgreSQL VMWare based machine to the Pure Storage box. The PostgreSQL server will be running as a virtual machine in VMWare ESX and connect over iSCSI to the storage system.

… and then restart the instance. When all is fine PostgreSQL will come up.

Finally to close this setup post here are some screenshots of the Pure Storage Management Web Console. The first one shows the “Storage” tab where you can see that the volume “volpgtest” is mapped to my host “pgpurestorage”.

The name you give the server is not important. The important information is the mapping of the “Host Port” which you can see here (this is the iSCSI IQN):

Once your server is connected you can see it in the connection map of the server in the console:

System health:

Last, but not least, here is the dashboard:

Not much traffic right now but we’ll be changing that in the next post.